FINISHING UP REPORTING ON THE TAG MEETING OF JANUARY 23, 2020

Well first of all let's have some upcoming dates. TAG + another Webinar are on February 6 and February 27, 2020 at 6:30 pm. The Webinars will again be about Risk Assessments. In my opinion these Webinars describe what either Risk Assessments or Site Specific Risk Assessments are supposed to be, not what they end up being in the hands of self-interested parties in charge of them. Lastly there is a RAC (Remediation Advisory Committee) scheduled for April 2/20 at 6 pm.

Linda Dickson of TAG (Technical Advisory Group) discussed the November and December Progress Reports. She indicated the pumping problems in November with off-site pumping wells W6B, W9 and with on-site pumping well PW4. By December the on-site well PW4 was back up and running although the same off-site wells as November were not. Linda indicated that the just off-site Sentry wells to the west of Lanxess had increasing concentrations of chlorobenzene and NDMA due to the loss of on-site hydraulic containment occasioned by PW4 not operating in November.

There has been a new suggestion by GHD that "pulse pumping" of E7 may improve the removal of contamination in surrounding soils. It appears as if they discovered this by accident which I don't find particularly confidence inspiring. After a couple of slowdowns in pumping well E7 at the south end of Elmira, they found that the following month more contaminant mass was removed than normal. The theory is that stop and start pumping may somehow accelerate contaminant mass removal. Of course as usual there was absolutely no technical reports or literature distributed to back up these claims. Is this just more junk science and psuedo science? Is this just an excuse for them to get away with decreased pumping at E7 along with so many other pumping wells? Hard to say. Time will usually tell although the cost is usually way too high. Both Sebastian Seibel-Achenbach and Linda of TAG wanted to know why TAG were not informed sooner about this new pumping routine.